Pluie a Rue de Rivoli (Rain on Rivoli Street), Paris

This photo of Rivoli Street, taken from inside a restaurant through

its rain-smeared windows, is of the restaurants of chi-chi Rivoli

Street (Rue de Rivoli), Paris, near Paris's down-town department

store (magasin) district. There were no 'filters' used to create

this entirely unmanipulated photo, with the only 'filters' being

natural ones -- the 'color' of the outdor lighting on the image

sensor and the 'smearing' of the rain on the restaurant window,

together with some movement from the moving pedestrians (vibration

reduction lens used, at low shutter speed). Your ratings and

critiqus are invited and most welcome. If you rate harshly or very

negatively, please submit a helpful and constructive comment/Please

share your superior knowledge to help improve my photography.

Thanks! Enjoy! John

John its not sharp however it has a nice feel print it on canves or water color parer it could be a winner. Regards Bob

This was taken through a window, sheeted with rain, through a rainstorm, in the middle of the night, partly with a time exposure, so there is no way it could be sharp.

 

And in no way was it meant to be sharp; it was meant to have the look and feel of an Impressionist painting, and in fact, probably does look more like an Impressionist painting than I'd care to believe if I were actually browsing through a museum full of such paintings.

 

I used to wonder at the Impressionists and where they got their vision; now I think they just 'blurred' things a little bit to give an 'impression' of what they were portraying, as I've done here.

 

Actually, the photo (the first of these) predated or presaged my intent to make it look 'Impressionistic'. When I saw the first of the series and how it looked, and saw the resemblance, then I truly tried to make it look Impressionistic.

 

It's just another of my photographic 'looks'. Thanks for letting me know your 'rate' however, as that means that you were very pleased. I also am pleased with this -- it's been sitting on my hard drive for two months (all my Paris work from four and a half days of shooting, approximately).

 

John (Crosley)

This photo, taken with a light-gathering f 2.8 lens, was taken with the lens 'stopped down' to bring foreground and background more into focus and also to cause a slower exposure, as there was a lot of light outside, and to blur the pedestrians a little bit, as a higher ISO was chosen (I haven't reviewed my EXIF data recently).

 

If one looks upper left, one can see the sheeting of the rain on the window I was shooting through; it was pouring outside intermittently.

 

Even in late fall/winter, Paris in early evening is full of pedestrians (one reason the French may be famously slender or at least not fat.)

 

John (Crosley)

I love this shot, John. I think that the colors and blur are absolutely perfect. More static would not be as rich...more motion would be too "done". There is a perfect balance going on, here. I am not sure that it could be duplicated.

Beautiful work.

I actually tried to duplicate this 'capture' at other times the same evening, and met with less than acceptable results. There was something about shooting through the sheeting rain on the restaurant windows looking outside down Rue de Rivoli toward Cafe de Rive Droit(e) (away from Seine) that captured that magic, and maybe the blue stripe from a blue-hued light actually brings out the yellow cast and the reddishness of various lights.

 

I think this was the first to third of a series, but the first good one, and there were many more, taken through dinner and afterward, also in a different direction, but this really is THE one, as you noted.

 

I always am using my cameras and lenses, even in low-light sitations, in parking lots at 2:00 a.m., in airports, in shopping malls, and other low-light situations -- even on a snowy tarmac from an unlighted airport (bus-actually a bus-like structure hauled across an airport tarmac by a tractor with snow inside and -5 degrees. Imagine me aiming my monster camera and lens with frozen fingers at the snow swirling around an Austrian Airline jetliner firing up its jets after an 11-hour delay on the ground, with the ground looking like it's more like a moving sand dune because it's composed of drifting snow after dark, under tarmac lights, taken during a stop as the tractor-bus combination stopped briefly on its way to our jet, there in Odessa, Ukraine during Europe's recent deep freeze that caused all those deaths in Russia, Ukraine, Poland, etc.

 

Testing is how you find out how and if things work or not, and many famous artists in the past tested their pigments and paints continually, and were greatly excited when they mixed a new color.

 

I'm excited when I can hold an exposure in a rain or snow storm at night and get a wonderful capture, as there is little competition in the inclement weather category (except of course hurricanes, recently).

 

Your discerning eye and skilled judgment never have had the full appreciation of the under-educated and fledgling photographer Photo.net audience, but for those who know good work, yours is excellent, and one can see that you truly work at being creative and different.

 

I try also to be at times -- stretching the envelope to learn this craft and perhaps turn it into an art.

 

John (Crosley)

Very nice Impressionistic capture, John.

Merci, George.

 

John

This actually is the Rue St. Denis, near the Rue de Rivoli, but not actually on it.

 

This is a fault of mine. This photo was taken from an all-night pizza restaurant there -- don't go looking to sit there and have drinks -- beer and wine or whiskeys till all hours -- they just serve food and hustle you out the door once you've paid and won't serve you drinks at all unless you're eating.

 

And in the rain, watch for slippery steps to the second floor bathrooms! But don't call them salle de bains (room of baths, which is a literal translation, as the French expect one to bathe in such a room -- one asks for 'la toilette', which is more literal and less obtuse than our American English, though distinctly less imaginary than the English W.C. -- water closet -- which hardly means anything at all, and is positively Victorian in its antisepsis.)

 

John (Crosley)